GTZ organises conference in Namibia

^{GTZ’s Country Director in Windhoek, Axel Momber, with Namibia‘s President Hifikepunye Pohamba during the Ministerial Conference}

Environment ministers and high-level negotiators from more than 40 African countries met in Windhoek, Namibia, on 8-9 March 2010 to develop a common position on a UN-sponsored regime on access to genetic resources and benefit sharing for countries of origin.

It is anticipated that an instrument on access and benefit sharing (ABS) will be adopted at the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Japan in October 2010. Among other things, the ABS regime will regulate, on a legally binding basis, the sharing of benefits arising for countries of origin from the commercial use of traditional knowledge of medicinal plants. It will also include a disclosure requirement in patent applications and create legal certainty for providers and users of genetic resources. However, work on this topic will not end with the adoption of the regime – this was the unanimous view of the African ministers attending a one-day conference with high-level European representatives after the Ministerial Conference. The reality is that equitable ways to capture the value of genetic resources can only be found if the industrialised and developing countries also formulate and implement ABS rules at national level – and that is still a long way off.

^{Photo: The nara plant is a thorny shrub found only in the Namib Desert. For the Topnaar, it is the traditional staple food and a source of oil. Agreements on access and benefit sharing (ABS) would enable local communities to profit from the marketing of nara products abroad. Danish Environment Minister Karen Ellemann is seen here discussing the many uses of the nara plant with a representative of the Topnaar community.}

A key goal of the Europe-Africa dialogue was to gain insights into the factors underlying the official negotiating positions. The meeting provided an opportunity to voice interests and concerns and ask questions about the other side’s positions, and it identified entry points for compromises at the negotiations. Denmark, which funded the conference, was represented by Environment Minister Karen Ellemann, with Ambassador Tor Christian Hildan attending on behalf of Norway. The dialogue partners from Germany were Ursula Heinen-Esser (Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Environment Ministry) and Heiko Warnken (Head of the Environment Division, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development – BMZ).

This first African Ministerial Conference on Access and Benefit Sharing was planned and organised by the Namibian Ministry of the Environment in cooperation with the ABS Capacity Development Initiative for Africa. The initiative is supported and financed by GTZ as part of the BMZ-funded supraregional ‘Conservation of Biodiversity’ programme. Other sponsors of the initiative are Norway, the Netherlands and the International Organisation of La Francophonie (IOF).